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Roger Waters Recites Palestinian Poem on Anti-Trump Song “Supremacy”

Roger Waters Recites Palestinian Poem on Supremacy

Roger Waters teamed up with Palestinian band Le Trio Joubran to record “Supremacy,” a rebuke to the Trump administration’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and eventually move the U.S. embassy there. The move was considered a major setback to the Middle East peace process. Waters’s contribution entailed reciting late Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish’s poem, “The Penultimate speech of the ‘Red Indian’ to the white man.”

“On the surface it narrates the last speech of The Native American to The White Man,” Waters said in a statement shared on Facebook, “but it speaks also to Darwish’s beloved Palestine, and its indigenous people, in fact to all victims of settler colonialism everywhere, always.”

The song was recorded in London and Paris after Trump made the announcement late last year.

“We have been touring the world with our ouds for the past 15 years, taking with us – from city to city – a bit of Palestine,” Le Trio Joubran said in a statement to Rolling Stone. “We honor the struggles of indigenous peoples across the globe, and through our art, affirm that the relationship between people, culture and their homeland survives history.”

Last fall Waters, who belongs to the activist group Artists for Palestine UK,  criticized Nick Cave for booking two shows in Tel Aviv.